Isabel Allende: If you could edit your past, what would you change?

If you could edit your past, what would you change?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Isabel Allende said elsewhere, not written here

I would not leave my teenage children to follow an unworthy love. It lasted a month and scarred the family for ever.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 December 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

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Lemn Sissay

I would build relationships. I would remember people’s significant moments. I would not fear closeness.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 October 2023 source ↗

Heather Graham American actress

I spent too many years being hard on myself, like a drill sergeant in my head. I thought that if I was hard on myself, I’d get more results, but I now know that’s not true.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 March 2016 source ↗

Steph McGovern Broadcaster

On BBC Breakfast, I accidentally said “fuck” on air. My microphone had been turned on when I wasn’t in the room. It went out across the telly and they had to apologise.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 November 2020 source ↗

Henry Marsh Neurosurgeon and writer

I should have known that I might not like what my brain scan showed, just as I should have known that the symptoms of prostatism that were increasingly bothering me were just as likely to be caused by cancer as by the benign prostatic enlargement that happens in most men as they age. But I continued to think that illness happened to patients and not to doctors, even though I was now retired. Twenty months after I had my brain scanned, I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. I had had typical symptoms for years, steadily getting worse, but it took me a long time before I could bring myself to ask for help. I thought I was being stoical when in reality I was being a coward. I simply couldn’t believe the diagnosis at first, so deeply ingrained was my denial.

Recorded Edited extract from And Finally: Matters of Life and Death, published by Vintage, The Guardian, 13 August 2022 source ↗